All posts for the month December, 2013

If you haven’t heard of this particular god before, don’t panic, it’s probably because you aren’t a men’s fashion insider.

(When I’m not pecking away in front of this little screen, or photographing enchiladas in my garage, I work for a pretty big global fashion house.)

Mr. Wooster has worked as a menswear buyer and fashion director for several men’s fashion heavyweights. Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys, Thom Brown, J.C. Penny, and Gilt Groupe to name just a few. He is the darling subject of the sartorial street photographers, usually pictured scurrying from one high-profile fashion event to the next….and almost always in a jaunty combination of camouflage, cashmere and pattern that only he could combine. Currently, he’s part owner and creative director of Artium NYC….a select boutique where average Joes can purchase menswear pieces the Wooster would proudly slap on his own body. Like sequined fleece harem pants.

Found his Christopher St. apartment featured on High Snobietyrecently,

Yes, yes, yes, it’s all a little more austere than I would usually like. Why is there nothing hanging on any of those greige walls? And where are the rugs and throw pillows?

But the whole place just exudes masculinity.

No kitchen? Pretty sure that he doesn’t cook, or eat, anyway. Towers of books each crowned with a vintage globe….like an adult game of chance, just daring you to pull one from the middle, or better yet, the very bottom. The leather tray filled with stainless steel gazing balls on that weathered metal cabinet. Boots on display……(yeah, we sort of do that too). Love that Stephen Kenn couch with cushions made from repurposed and untreated WWII military fabric. The kind they used to make tents and duffel bags. Really dig the kudu skull too.

His home is exactly like his razor-sharp ensembles. Sensible, masculine, – never overly detailed or embellished – and perfectly tailored just for him.

When my mother was in High School, not to give away anyone’s age, but let’s just say that it was sometime in the 60’s, she took a class field trip to New York City USA. Quite the adventure for a small town Ohio girl. As part of the organized field trip, the kids had a chance to see a real life Broadway musical. They had 2 top shows to choose from. The first one was a cavalcade of big name Broadway stars…Orson Bean, Sydney Chaplin, Carol Lawrence, Gordon Connell, Grayson Hall, Phyllis Newman……that my young Mother just couldn’t pass up.

So she saw Subways are For Sleeping.

Subways are for Sleeping?

I know, I’d never heard of it before either…..

So I did what anybody my age would do…..and Googled it…..

Subways are for Sleeping is a musical with book by Betty Comden/Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The original Broadway production ran for 205 performances from 1961-1962 (Oops, how did those years slip in there?)

Here’s the plot:

Angie McKay is a magazine writer assigned to write a story about a group of well-dressed homeless people sleeping in the New York subway system. Their leader is Tom Bailey, a one-man employment agency who finds other drifters odd jobs (Street-corner Santas, mostly) and sleeping quarters. To help research her story, Angie goes undercover and pretends to be a stranded girl from out-of-town. Trouble/Hilarity ensues when Tom discovers her real identity.

The entire musical was inspired on an article about New York’s homeless population in the March 1956 issue of Harper’s written by Edmund G. Love, who actually slept on subway trains throughout the 1950s. Love had a bizarre hobby of eating at every restaurant in the Manhattan Yellow Pages in the exact alphabetical order in witch they were listed.

Subways Are for Sleeping opened to mostly negative reviews. The show lacked publicity, mainly because the New York Transit Authority refused to post any advertisements for fear of vagrants misunderstanding the adds as an actual invitation to sleep in the subways.

Producer David Merrick had the brilliant idea to invite individuals with the same names as prominent theater critics (such as Walter Kerr, Richard Watts, Jr and Howard Taubman) to the show and then print their favorable comments in print adds. Unfortunately for them, the adds also had photo accompaniments, and the picture of well-known critic Richard Watts was not a black man. It was this cleverly publicised stunt that gave the show the little traffic it needed to survive for a few months on Broadway.

Phyllis Newman, writer Green’s wife, won a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, despite – or possibly assisted by – the fact that her costume was only a towel.

And just what was the other Broadway show that she could have chosen?….

She thinks it was some musical about 7 Austrian children whose Governess/Nun leads them over the Swiss Alps to flee the Nazis,

I have a Jeep – almost paid for – that I guarantee you I will drive until it falls apart. (Anyone who knows me personally can confirm this). I still wear 10-year-old jeans. My shoe of choice are Converse Chuck Taylors….think I have about 10 pair in varying states of wear and tear. They cost about 30 bucks a pair at the outlet.

I’m lucky to have a decent job and live inside my means.

20 years ago, not so much.

20 years ago, spending big bucks for a Christmas ornament was just outrageous.

OUTRAGEOUS!

Christopher Radko was still new on the Christmas ornament scene then, and only the fanciest of stores sold his delicate hand-blown, hand-painted glass ornaments.

It was at the very fanciest of all the fancy stores in Dallas, Neiman Marcus, that I first saw this guy.

(insert sound of angels playing trumpets here)

“Injun Joe”, from Tom Sawyer I assumed.

He was created in a vintage mold that hadn’t been used in about 50 years until Mr. Radko revived the Eastern European tradition of hand-crafted glass ornaments. Each one takes about a week to make.

“..and his price?” you ask.

20 dollars

Might as well have been 2,000 dollars, because I didn’t have that kind of money to spend on a 3 inch glass ornament.

Enter my dear friend Lenny, the minute he saw this ornament, he could think of only one person who would truly appreciate it…..me.

Of course I would, it was everything that I love – Christmas, Indians, Neiman Marcus – all wrapped up in one fragile little item.

He gave it to me in a used Tiffany gift box, which he quickly reclaimed, (my gift was the ornament, not the box)

The very next December, at Neiman Marcus of course, I met with this man – Christopher Radko – and he signed my Indian.

My very first Radko glass ornament.

And so the dice were cast……..

For those of you that don’t know, the Radko company started with a crash.

A BIG crash.

The new tree stand that young Christopher Radko had bought for his family’s Christmas tree snapped under the weight of the decades worth of heirloom blown glass ornaments and sent the collection to the ground. Young Mr. Radko immediately started an attempt to replace his family’s cherished collection, only to find that “new” ornaments were mostly cheap and plastic. On a personal holiday in Poland, he found some blown glass bottles in a shop, and asked if it were possible for the artisans to also make glass ornaments, like the ones his family had lost. It was, and he brought a handful back to the U.S. But they never made it to his family tree. They were immediately snatched up by his fiends who were looking for the same link to their Christmas’s past.

……..and so a brand was born.

That was 1985,

The 10 year anniversary in 1995 saw the debut of the Radko collection in a table top book.

Now, I know which ones I’m still missing.

Little did Lenny know, or Mr. Radko, or myself for that matter, that that little indian ornament would snowball into an almost 20 year collection of Radko ornaments.

I have so many now that the tree is almost completely covered.

I just hate to see any bare spots.

Mostly Indians, and cowboys, and snowmen, and Santas, and Mickey Mouse, and a myriad of storybook characters…..here are just a few of my favorites (there are way to many favorites to photo every one)

I mostly find them online. The ones from the mid 90’s are my favorites and pretty reasonably priced on eBay.

Sometimes, I pick up a newer one that really calls to me in a store.

But most of them are gifts from family and friends.

And my friend Lenny, yeah, he’s given me quite a few more over the years.

William Joyce is an American artist, illustrator, and film maker who wrote his first book in the 4th grade.

Since then he has written and illustrated over fifty children’s books including George Shrinks, Santa Calls, Dinosaur Bob and his Adventures with the Family Lazardo, Rolie Polie Olie, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs , A Day with Wilbur Robinson and the Guardians of Childhood series.

He did character developement for Pixar Films Toy Story and A Bug’s Life. While collaborating with director Chris Wedge to develop his book Santa Calls into a full-length movie, they accidentally came up with the idea for the film Robots. Several movies came after that; Meet the Robinsons*, Rise of the Guardians, and Epic. His animated short film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore earned him an Oscar just last year.

When I was working at Sak’s Fifth Avenue in 1995, William Joyce designed the company’s holiday windows and interiors.

and I was introduced to his book Santa Calls.

In the book, Art Atchinson Aimesworth — inventor, crime fighter, and all-around whiz kid-journeys to the north pole with his sister, Esther, and pal, Spaulding, by special invitation from Santa himself.

There were even ornaments of Joyce’s vested Santa designed by Christopher Radko.

I dug around in the hoard and found that I still had this Saks Fifth Avenue in-store poster of Santa ice-skating in Rockefeller Center.

No clue as to what I’ll ever do with it, but I have it none the less.

Joyce’s elegant, gentlemanly version of Santa Claus has even graced the cover of the New Yorker a few times.

In 1994,

…and again in 2001.

William Joyce takes style influence from the best illustrators—Winsor McCay, Maurice Sendak, Robert Lawson, Maxfield Parrish, Beatrix Potter, and N. C. Wyeth, and mixes them with the sublime—Stuart Little, The Borrowers, and Winnie-the-Pooh—and even the ridiculous—Bugs Bunny, Little Orphan Annie, and Mad Magazine.

Yep, it’s all in there……

*(Side note here, on my first date with Jamie, we impulsively caught a showing of Meet the Robinsons, and I knew right then that any grown man who would see an animated feature movie with me at 9 o’clock on a Tuesday night would be around for the long haul…………..and I was right)